Remote asset management systems are employed in a variety of today's work environments. Remote asset management systems typically utilize global positioning satellite technology and other sensors to provide information associated with a remotely operated equipment system to a work-site manager. Remote asset management systems may also include data communication systems configured to transmit operational and status information to a data acquisition server, allowing project managers to remotely monitor the productivity and health of equipment systems operating in work environments. Remote management systems may be particularly useful in geographically dispersed work environments that require the management and coordination of multiple resources or equipment systems to complete a task associated with a work environment.
Remote asset management systems may include on-board sensors and GPS receivers with satellite, cellular, and/or other communication equipment for communicating location and health information associated with a remote asset to a data collection server for distribution to a back-end system. This communication equipment may access one or more predetermined subscriber-based networks. Often, the costs for accessing these networks vary depending upon the location of the remote asset. In certain remote areas, the costs associated with accessing a reliable communication network or platform may be expensive. Moreover, in many conventional communication systems, data is transmitted in the order it is received in the communication queue.
Communication problems may arise when the predetermined communication medium becomes slow or disabled, potentially preventing high-value machine data from reaching its destination in a timely manner. For example, communication via satellite may be slow or unavailable if line-of-sight between the mobile transceiver and the satellite is interrupted. These problems may be exacerbated when valuable bandwidth is wasted transmitting low-value data or other data that is not time sensitive. Thus, in order to ensure that critical work-site communication channels are maintained, a system that prioritizes data associated with the machine and work-site and provides one or more communication methods for ensuring that high-value data is transmitted with appropriate urgency may be required.
One way to ensure that communication channels are maintained in work environments is to implement on-board communication systems that support multiple communication methods. As a result, if one communication method should become unavailable, a backup communication method may be used. One such system is provided in U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2006/0136291 (“the '291 publication”) to Morita et al. The '291 publication describes a vehicle managing method for communicating data to a fleet of vehicles via satellite or ground-based communication networks (cellular, DSRC, etc.). The system of the '291 publication may receive operational data (e.g., speed, direction, condition, etc.) from each vehicle in the fleet via an available communication network. The system of the '291 publication may also enable the communication of data between a subscriber to one or more vehicles in the fleet. This data may include entertainment programming (e.g., music or video data associated with music or video data subscriptions), traffic information, directions, or any other type of data that may be requested by an operator of the vehicle.
Although the system of the '291 publication may provide multiple communication methods for transmitting vehicle data between one or more geographically dispersed vehicles and a subscriber, it may still be unreliable. For example, the system of the '291 publication may only be configured to transmit data on a first-in, first-out (FIFO) basis, without regard for the importance of the data to the work-site environment. As a result, should network resources or bandwidth be limited by a service interruption, valuable network bandwidth may be unnecessarily wasted transmitting low-priority data (e.g., entertainment data such as music, video, etc.) instead of high-priority information (health data, productivity data, etc.) that may be critical to the successful operation of the work-site.
In certain situations, the system of the '291 publication may be unnecessarily expensive. For example, should one or more relatively inexpensive transmission mediums (e.g., broadcast, WLAN, etc.) lose service, the system of the '291 publication may utilize more expensive transmission methods (e.g., cellular, DSRC) to transmit the required data. Because the required data is not prioritized, however, bandwidth and airtime associated with the more expensive communication methods may be wasted sending non-critical or irrelevant information over the network, driving up costs associated with data communication associated with mobile assets.
The presently disclosed system for strategic management and communication of data in machine environments is directed toward overcoming one or more of the problems set forth above.